Андрей Белый: автобиографизм и биографические практики - [86]
The interplay between biological life and specifically autobiographical literary representation within the postmodernist Russian context was recently studied by Philipp Kohl in relation to the work of Dmitrij Prigov, another author of novels where the self is fictional.[693] Based on the discussed theories of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who makes a difference between «bios» as political life and «zoe» as biological life, and also the distinction made by Aristotle between «bios» as a form of life in the polis and «zoe» as life deprived of political qualities, Kohl proposes the concept of «zoegraphical writing», in which the autobiographical texts refer not only to the life of the human being, but also to non-human forms of life, including animals.
Belyj, as we know, has often used forms of zoomorphism that acquire diverse values in different texts.[694] It is a rhetorical strategy of central importance for Belyj for what concerns his auto-biographical representation. The writer uses it primarily in the depiction of the relationship that, in the words of Samé, we could define «oppressor—oppressed» and that serves as a leitmotif in his autobiographical works. The devices through which the representation of the father—son and the teacher—student (mainly, but not only, Rudolf Steiner) relationship are made can be inscribed in the category. In this paper I will focus only on the first relationship, which has already been the subject of numerous studies.[695] By use of the interpretative scheme proposed by Samé, I will show how the comparison with animals can be considered a fundamental rhetorical strategy in Belyj.
In each of his works the father—son relationship is built by various devices. Among them the comparison with the animals is extremely widespread especially in «Peterburg» (and even more so in its theater and movie script), «The Baptized Chinaman» and in the first of the two novels of the cycle «Moscow». In «The Baptized Chinaman»[696] zoomorphism becomes an important constructive element, while the use of the images of animals is a dominant rhetorical strategy. Basically all of the characters in the novel are described on the basis of a comparison with animals or are themselves with animals that are in the backdrop.
As with Apollon Apollonovič, Nikolaj Letaev (the father of Kotik) is described by the son in the form of a spider monster with a large shapeless head and a huge forehead which changes shape like a spider (BC 15). He sees him either as a man with a Schythian profile and Tatar eyes, or as a ridiculous «čudak». His huge spider forehead fails, Belyj says, to bear abstract thoughts. His office is dusty and cobwebbed (BC passim), above his head the bats fly like they were in a monstrous cavern. For the child, the father is a terrible beast with stubble, beyond which the ferocious mouth greedily swallows the words (BC 15). The description that the author, through the eyes of the child (who is both witness and narrator), provides of the father is made up by a whole collection of images related to different animals. The man has the nose of a goose (BC 20) or resembles a frog (BC 222), has eyes like mice (BC 109, 198), hands like paws and jumps like a frog (BC 20). He looks like an ox (BC 19), a dog – i.e. his own dog Tomočka (BC 8, 59, 147, 148), who is at times bloodthirsty, at times meek, or he is a stupid rhinoceros, a bull (BC 19) or a walrus (BC 227). His words are like the snakes that he shows to the child in the books (BC 14). The father is repeatedly associated with the flies, which he catches with his hands, wriggling in a ridiculous way in the eyes of his son (BC 21, 96). Even his poses and attitudes are constantly compared to that of an animal; for example, his handkerchief waving behind him looks like a tail (BC 20), his head between his shoulders resembles that of a bull (BC 20) and he is compared to the bull also for his stubbornness (BC 27) and sadness (BC 107). Kotik notices that his father licks his own lips like a cat (BC 33) or how, red in his face during a conversation, he is similar a red ox (BC 59) or even to a gadfly while he converses with his wife (BC 95). He sits like a goat (BC 135), roars like a hedgehog (BC 160), has the face of a walrus (BC 227).
Even the epithets used in his description refer to the image of the beast: cruel or feral («zverskij»), which is repeated at least six times in the novel. Some verbs related to animals describe his actions: he yelps (BC 19), he is afraid, smells, touches, crumples, rolls, gallops, drools (BC 160). Kotik says he is «an elephant that smells like a hyena» (BC 80). Finally, in the details of his clothing, he wears a raccoon fur (BC 100) and a bearskin seal (BC 114).
The animal traits make it possible, through the eyes of the child to transform the father into a mythological creature, a satyr, a Cyclops (BC 146), a green dragon (BC 147) with eyes that look like a blue sky behind the clouds (BC 18), with thunder in his beard (BC 18), with, as we already noticed, the Scythian traits (BC 15, 35) and Tatar eyes (BC 15), reminiscent of a Chinese sage who has the wisdom of Confucius (BC 22, 80, 116, 223), the face looks like a mask of a samurai, who draws his saber. The simplest actions the father carries out in his home are for Kotik heroic and amazing acts, thanks to which the father then becomes a Japanese warrior (BC 150–152) or a Scythian knight (BC 154). It seems that he is made of stone, as if abstracted from real life, a kind of «emotional upheaval of the nerves» (BC 21–22).
